Different
by lookingforthestars
Summary: Maybe they are too different.
1. Chapter 1

**Honestly I've been looking forward to writing a fic about Waige having their first blowout fight as a couple, and last night's episode (my heart) seemed like a good opportunity. *Evil laugh***

Paige sat in the car, staring at the garage. She'd arrived five minutes ago, leisurely sipping her coffee and checking her e-mail. Stalling. Which was illogical. The man she loved was inside, probably waiting for her to arrive, and on any other morning she would welcome a bit of exclusive time with him. They didn't get that often. She liked the way Walter seemed to light up when she walked in, greeting her with more coffee and a quick kiss.

But last night had been…awkward. Walter had pushed her away dozens of times, but he'd never brushed her off like that. Not since they had ended their impasse and started one of the most aggravating and fulfilling relationships in her life. She knew Dopey Walter wasn't around to stay, and that was okay. She just hadn't expected Genius Walter to steer quite so far in the other direction.

Paige sighed, dropping her head against the seat briefly before she forced herself to wedge the door open with her foot and slide out, locking it behind her.

She stopped short once she was in the garage, unprepared for the sight of Walter sleeping soundly in his chair, his head buried in his arms on the desk. The blackboard was densely covered with yellow chalk and some of the writing appeared different from his. Her hunch was further confirmed by the two coffee cups laying side-by-side nearby.

"Walter?" Paige shook his shoulder gently, running her fingers up through his hair. It took a few tries before the genius stirred awake, blinking and rubbing his face.

"Paige?" He looked around at the empty garage, frowning. "What time is it? Where is everyone?"

"It's eight. And they'll be here later." Sylvester had an alderman meeting, Cabe was helping Allie with a leak in her apartment, and Happy and Toby were 'picking up medicine,' which could have been literal or a euphemism. "You didn't make it to the loft last night?"

Walter shook his head, grunting groggily. "I, uh, started a project and I guess I got…caught up." He glanced at the board before pushing slowly up from his desk. "I don't even remember falling asleep."

She rubbed his back, fixing his disheveled collar with her other hand. "I'll make you some coffee. You should go upstairs and shower."

"Yeah. Okay," he mumbled, stopping as an afterthought to ask, "H-How was your night?"

Restless. Boring. A little lonely. "Fine, I guess."

Walter nodded. "Good. Um, thank you for understanding that I needed to focus on work last night. We made real progress on my ideas. It was a satisfying cognitive experience after yesterday's nonsense."

"We? You and Sylvester?"

The surprised look on his face alerted her to the fact that he was most definitely not talking about Sylvester. And since Happy and Toby were gone before her…

"Florence," she muttered, biting her lip to tamp down her visceral reaction. Walter swore up and down that his dream about her was meaningless. The chemist herself had insisted that she would never develop those types of feelings for him. But what else could she possibly imagine when he'd clearly blown her off to spend all night with their neighbor?

Walter swallowed, studying her uncertainly. "Paige, it was strictly…"

"Save it, Walter. I'm not interested." She grabbed the discarded cups and stalked off to the kitchen, feeling like an idiot. He wasn't Drew, she knew that, but the same dread that surrounded his infidelity was currently clawing in her stomach.

The genius followed, suddenly seeming much more alert. "Paige, you're being illogical," he said as she dropped the mugs into the sink with a loud clang. "She is a talented chemist and her assistance on my project was invaluable—."

"Great. Hire her on full-time. And then you won't even need me, because I'm not a genius and I don't have a badge," she snapped, starting to walk away again—she wasn't entirely sure where—before Walter grabbed her arm.

"Paige, what's happening right now?" The genuine confusion on his face made her falter, just for a second, but yelling seemed easier than breaking down, so she shook him off.

"I don't care about your stupid project, Walter. I care that you were completely uninterested in spending time with your girlfriend, and now I have to find out that you stayed up all night with the woman that you dreamt about being _married_ to. Did you think for a second how that might make me feel?"

Walter furrowed his eyebrows, his expression morphing from lost to annoyed. "I wasn't aware that I needed permission to work on other interests outside of our relationship."

"So that's a no, then." Paige stormed back into the office, feeling like she would explode if she stood still. "You know what? I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I can't stimulate your brain, Walter. I'm sorry that one day of being like me was so horribly unpleasant for you that you needed to hang out with smart people to recover. I'm sorry that I'm just your dumb girlfriend who forces you to lower your IQ for her."

Even she was surprised by the venom in her voice. Walter halted in front of her desk, looking at her like she had sprouted two heads. "That's not true. You are exceptionally intelligent and I've never told you otherwise."

"Right. Just not as smart as Florence." Facing a lack of anything else to do with her hands, Paige channeled her frustration into organizing the loose paperwork on her desk. "Even after all this time, Walter, you will _always_ choose your intelligence over me."

"I don't understand what that means."

"It means that we waited three years to be together and I still come second to your IQ." She bit her lip, fighting the urge to cry and scream and escape all at the same time. "When you were loopy on that case, you asked for my help. You asked me to be your partner. And you said t-that you envied my EQ. You asked me to teach you about music. For an hour of your life, you were normal, and it was—." Walter's face fell and she stopped abruptly. "I d-didn't mean that."

"No, let's talk about the case." He crossed his arms in front of him, pressing his lips into a tight line. "I remember every second. Everything you said to me. And I remember how disappointed you were when my mental faculties were restored."

"That's not fair."

"That person that I was underground is not me, Paige. I've never stopped trying to develop my EQ to connect with you, but if you need someone whose IQ isn't in the way, you have to know I'm never going to be that person."

Paige released a sharp breath, dropping the papers in her hands. "I never asked you to be, but your IQ isn't everything! If you keep blocking me out of that part of your life and you don't have any interest in the things I care about, then what the hell are we doing?"

"My IQ _is_ everything," Walter rebutted. "It's what defines me. It is the only thing I can possibly contribute to the world. To Scorpion. Hell, to Ralph. Losing it, even temporarily, is terrifying and you can't possibly understand what that's like."

"Yeah. Of course. I have no idea what it feels like to lose something important," she bit out. They hadn't fought like this since he fired her. But the voice in her head telling her it was a mistake was drowned out by the sound of her heart pounding. "Maybe we are just too different. Maybe we were both stupid to keep forcing this."

Walter swallowed, staring at her with an unreadable expression. She wanted him to insist that she was wrong. That their differences weren't important because they loved each other. But he didn't respond.

Paige shrugged. "That's it? You're not gonna say anything?"

"I don't know what to say."

She heard someone—probably Cabe—pull behind the garage and park. She didn't want to him to see her like this. She didn't want to be there, period.

Paige sniffed, hastily clearing her damp eyes. "Maybe if you were deprived of oxygen, huh?" she said before she grabbed her purse, walking away from her silent boyfriend and back toward the car she probably never should have left.


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks for the reviews! Keep 'em coming, I can definitely use them right now.**

He was an idiot.

 _I don't know what to say._

He was being literal. Replaying the exchange in his head, he realized it may have sounded like he had nothing to say. But that was incorrect. They were arguing over so many things at once that Walter didn't know where to start and Paige was so close to tears that he was terrified of saying the wrong thing and making it worse.

Of course, that was precisely what he'd done.

 _Maybe if you were deprived of oxygen, huh?_

Walter blew out a frustrated breath. That wasn't entirely without basis. It seemed that he couldn't share his feelings openly and honestly unless he was mentally impaired.

There was only one exception. The best day of his life. The day he'd told the truth and learned that Paige was in love with him too.

Perhaps she was right. Perhaps they were too different, and they were fooling themselves into thinking it could work. But he still wanted it to work more than anything.

Where did they even stand now? His breakups had always been blunt, almost clinical. Did Paige leaving signify the end of their relationship? Had he ruined his last chance by failing to stop her? Or was she waiting for him to reach out first and apologize? He hadn't heard from her since she stormed out five hours earlier, and Walter was concerned about her ability to drive in that state. Surely if something had happened, he would have heard by now. Which meant she was safe at home, or another location she would find comforting. If a case didn't present itself, he could give her some time to cool down and then call to check—.

Walter jumped, startled, as Toby dropped a four-hundred-page psychiatric textbook on his desk, rattling the rest of the items on the cluttered surface. "Welcome back, Walt."

The genius pushed aside his train of thought, pretending to refocus on the abandoned code on his laptop. "I haven't gone anywhere."

"You've been zoned out for the last twenty minutes. Happy proposed throwing a wrench at your head, but I went against my baser instincts and stopped her."

He couldn't dispute that he was distracted. But he didn't have time for Toby's mind games. "Do you need something?"

"Yeah. There's a car on fire outside." Walter's head snapped up again. "Just kidding. But now I have your attention."

"Spit it out," he grumbled. Being the subject of Toby's close examination was always unnerving and the last thing he needed was to be shrinked.

"Fine. You said Paige had a personal matter," Toby moved his fingers in air quotes, "but you've been grouchy all day and I've witnessed a whopping zero calls or texts. Want to tell your best friend what's really going on?"

"No. And you're hardly my best friend."

"Ouch." If Toby was genuinely offended by the comment, he shrugged it off quickly. "I'm going to go out on a very, very short limb and assume that you're in the doghouse."

The genius frowned. "How are dogs involved in this?"

"Good lord, 197. It's like you grew up in an actual cave." The psychiatrist cleared off the edge of the desk and sat down. Walter grimaced at the uninvited company but decided against initiating a second conflict. "You and our lovely liaison have clearly hit a bump. Now the question is, are we talking molehill or Everest?"

"That's your question?"

Toby shrugged.

"It was just a misunderstanding." That was partially true. Nothing untoward had occurred between him and Florence, so Paige's fears were unfounded. But he could concede that if the roles were reversed, he might not view the situation through a strictly rational lens. "I'll handle it."

"Oof. So Mauna Kea then." Walter ignored him, already tired of Toby's metaphors. "What did you do?"

"What makes you think I did anything?" Toby shot him a pitying look and Walter sighed, knowing he had a point. "The case yesterday stirred up certain…concerns," he begrudgingly admitted, opting to leave out any mention of the chemist. "Paige believes that I value her less than my IQ. Which is preposterous."

"Is it?" Toby bent his knee on the desk, bumping lightly against Walter's laptop. "I don't know if you've noticed, but being a genius is kind of what you've built your whole life around."

Everyone knew how much he cared about Paige. Toby had, on more than one occasion, been the one pushing him to accept his new and strange feelings for her. How could he think that Paige was correct?

 _My IQ is everything._

Okay, so possibly that was the wrong way to express himself. His intelligence was…complicated. It alienated him from others, but it also allowed him to save lives. He'd thought that was one of the things Paige liked about him.

"Look," Toby continued, not waiting for Walter to answer. "I don't know exactly what happened, but I do know you tend to push people away when you feel like you've lost control. Do you think maybe you pushed Paige away because you were embarrassed about being a part-time dope? You made reclaiming and exercising your IQ your number one priority?"

Walter swallowed. Paige had accused him of not wanting to spend time with her, which was absurd. He never got tired of being around her. But turning down her invitation in favor of work likely did not communicate that fact.

"Maybe." Being normal hadn't been so bad. He'd sort of enjoyed it, at the time. But it wasn't him. And the sneaking feeling that Paige was more interested in Impaired Walter made him doubt whether he could ever really be the person she wanted. "My IQ is important, Toby. Our work is important. I shouldn't be forced to choose."

Toby shook his head. "I highly doubt that Paige is asking you to choose. She knows you. But she was the one who helped you save my life when your IQ was kaput, so I'd say you need her either way." He swung his legs off the desk, not bothering to rearrange anything he'd disturbed. "And remember this, my friend. You've always been a genius. But I never saw you happy until you met her."

* * *

He hadn't called.

Of course he hadn't. She'd effectively said that Walter was stupid and suggested they shouldn't bother any longer. Did he think they were broken up? Was he simply giving her time to clear her head? Was he done with her for good?

Paige thought about calling him. Multiple times. But if he was off saving the world…or worse, shutting her out…she hesitated to discover how she would react if he didn't answer.

She didn't want to be insecure about Florence. She wanted to believe Walter when he assured her that they were strictly professional. But she'd been burned badly before and the idea of him growing tired of her and moving on so soon into their relationship was devastating. If Walter—the person she trusted with everything, up to and including her life—betrayed her, she wasn't sure she would ever trust anyone again.

And if she wasn't enough for him, then clearly, she just wasn't enough.

Paige held a pillow over her face, groaning loudly into it. Ralph was heading up the science club after school and wouldn't be home for hours. She didn't really need to muffle her frustration. It was just a natural response to shielding her emotions from her son all those years, she guessed.

Then the Florence thing morphed into an entirely different argument Paige didn't even realize she was starting. Sure, his lack of EQ was a challenge sometimes. And he could be a painful know-it-all. But those things had always been true and it hadn't stopped her from falling madly in love with him.

 _For an hour of your life, you were normal._

But she didn't tell him that. She made him think that Dopey Walter was the better version of him. She'd said all the wrong things and it wasn't until the anger dissipated that she realized _she_ was the idiot for walking away.

Paige was staring indecisively in the general direction of her phone when she was distracted by a noise outside her door. She laughed humorlessly. For a second, it sounded like someone was playing Moon River.

Great, now she was just hallucinating.

She shut her eyes and tried to tune it out, but the music was unmistakable. What were the odds that someone in her complex was playing that song? Today, of all days?

There was a knock at the door accompanied by, "Paige? Are you home?"

Her eyes popped open and she sat up abruptly, nearly tumbling off the couch. Paige tried to make herself presentable—like he hadn't seen her at her absolute worst—before tugging open the door. "Walter? What are you—."

Paige's question faded out as the genius held up his phone, revealing the source of the music. Which simultaneously made the most sense and no sense at all. "I searched online for, um, romantic gestures. It's from Tell Me Everything."

She frowned, trying to decipher the scene in front of her. "Say Anything?"

"Oh. You know it?"

Walter's confusion was strangely endearing, and Paige had to suppress a smile. "Just…come in before you annoy my neighbors." She grabbed his arm and led him into the entryway, shutting the door behind him. "And you can turn the music off."

He did as she asked, putting his phone back into his pocket. "It's a nice song," he offered.

"It's one of my favorites." Paige bit her lip, torn between relief that he was there and fear that it would all end exactly the same as it had that morning. "What are you doing here?"

Walter exhaled, his shoulders slumping as he looked at her uncertainly. "Did we break up?"

"Do you want to?" she asked slowly, realizing as the words left her mouth that she was terrified of his response. Although that was illogical, since he was the one who'd pulled a John Cusack outside her apartment.

"No."

Relief rushed through her and Paige sighed, running a hand through her hair. "Neither do I."

"Okay." They stood in tentative silence for a moment until Walter coughed. "I-I'm sorry. About last night, mostly. I have no intention of becoming involved with Florence, and I'm not sure how to convince you of that. But I suppose I could start with no more all-nighters."

"Thank you." She swallowed, too many ideas rushing out of her brain and catching in her throat. "I believe you, Walter. I do. I was just sensitive about you choosing to stay and work instead of coming with me. And it felt like…like Florence could give you something I couldn't. I didn't like that feeling."

"Yes. I tried to imagine how I might react if you did the same with another man and it was…" Paige almost laughed as his face twisted into a grimace. "Unpleasant."

"How empathetic of you," she teased, relaxing as a little more of the tension in her chest dissolved. "I'm sorry, too. I just…" Paige braced herself. It was always so much easier to hide or lash out than to tell someone what was really upsetting her, but that obviously hadn't worked out. "I worry that you're bored with me."

"Paige, that's—."

"Please, let me finish." She held up a hand, and Walter fell quiet, nodding. "You were so convinced that I would get bored with you, but sometimes it seems like you got there first. It's like…if I can't keep up with you intellectually, then what do I offer? Sex? A distraction? How can I compete with someone who understands the most important part of who you are? I'm learning, Walter, but I can only get so far and I don't know how long it'll be before you get frustrated with that."

Walter didn't respond for a long moment, until he was sure she was done speaking. "No one keeps up with me intellectually. Except Ralph," he said finally, earning an eyebrow raise from her. "W-What I mean is…even in the presence of other geniuses, or at least people with relatively high IQs, I've always been alone. And now we're together and I…I'm not. I can't explain it. But you fulfill a need for me that my IQ can't touch."

Paige pressed her lips together, embarrassingly hot tears pricking her eyes. She reached out and took his hands, her craving for contact kicking into high gear. "You do that for me too," she reassured him. "But I want to know everything about your world and I want you to know mine. Music, art…those are the things I understand. The things I care about. When you dismiss them….it's like you're dismissing me."

"Oh." Walter paused, considering her words carefully. "I didn't mean to do that. But I think I understand. When you say you need a break from genius things…"

"It sounds like I need a break from you," she finished, cringing as she recalled the many, _many_ times she'd said something to that effect. "I don't mean it like that either."

"I can't turn it off. I wish I could."

"I know." Paige extricated one of her hands and brought it to his cheek, grazing her thumb over his rough stubble. "You opened up to me about one of your biggest fears and I dismissed it. Your IQ has saved so many people and helped me connect with my son. It's a huge part of what I love about you, and losing it…I'm sure it's not easy." His expression softened, and Paige kicked herself for not approaching him this way earlier. "I love who you are, Walter. I just want you to love who I am too. Even if we don't understand everything about each other."

He squeezed her hand. "I-I do. And I apologize for my lack of effort in that respect. The things that are important to you are important to me, even if I don't always show it properly."

"Thank you." Paige smiled warmly, the heavy weight she'd been carrying all day dwindling down to almost nothing. Their differences would always complicate things. But he was trying just as much as she was, and that was enough for now. "How about we do my thing tonight? We can make dinner and I'll teach you about the classics. And then tomorrow night, we'll order takeout and you can teach me about your project with Florence. Bounce ideas off me. Or…think out loud in my direction, at least."

Walter huffed out a quiet laugh. "I agree to your terms."

"Good." Paige closed the distance, leaning in to kiss him the way she'd frankly wanted to do the second he showed up at her door. She wrapped her arms around his neck, melting against him slightly as his hands found her waist. "No matter what I'm doing, it's always better with you there, Walter."

He grinned. "Reciprocated."


End file.
